The Mississippi fairly glides through this old cotton country, nothing if not strong and serene. But look a little closer at the big river and you'll notice an upwelling here and a dark eddy there. Something powerful, it appears, lurks beneath the surface.

In this hollowed-out little town of 3,511 people, a newspaperman named Stanley Nelson can be found most days clattering away on a decade-old Mac computer. He moves with a slow and purposeful calm. But he too has been roiling the waters.

Not long past New Year's Day -- after four years of painstaking shoe leather, deep document dives and endless interviews -- Nelson published a front page exposé like none the weekly Concordia Sentinel had ever seen.